Status and Distribution of wild boar in Rio Grande do Sul,
Southern Brazil
Carlos Fonseca*, Mateus Pereira das Neves**, Valcirlei G. da Silva**,
Scherezino Scherer**, António M. M. S. de Avila Campelo*** Lélia L.
Pinto*** & Miguel F. S. Cáceres Filho ****
* Department of Biology/CESAM, University of Aveiro, 31810-193 Aveiro, Portugal, E-mail:
[email protected]
** Residencial Samambaia-R. Orestes Miraglia nº 4-35, CEP 17018-140 -BAURU/SP, Brazil
*** ER/IBAMA/BAURU, Brazil; **** DEPRN/ET/BAURU, Brazil.
Key words: wild boar, alien species, expansion, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
Introduction
The historical presence of the wild boar in South America is not still very clear.
According to COELHO DA SILVEIRA ET AL. (2003) some wild boar groups were
imported from Europe (Portugal and Spain, mainly) to Argentina (South
America) in the beginning of the XXth century. In 1928 boars were translocated
to Uruguay for meat production and some of them accidentally escape, allowing
the spread of animals in the wild. In 1989 wild boars invade Brazilian territory
through Southwest border between Rio Grande do Sul (RGS) and Uruguay
(PEREIRA DAS NEVES, 2007) and during the nineties several records of damages
caused by wild boars in RGS were reported by IBAMA (the Brazilian Nature
Conservancy Agency). In 2002 those damages were estimated around R$ 4
300 000 approximately € 1 331 000 (IBAMA, unpublished data).
The aim of this work was to obtain information on the actual status and
distribution of the wild boar population in Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)
Material and methods
In order to obtain information regarding the presence/absence of the wild boar
population in RGS, a field survey based on direct and indirect methods
(observation of animals and the presence tracks, signs, etc.) was performed in
rural properties of RGS between October 2005 and September 2006.
Nowadays the State of Rio Grande do Sul (281.748 km², divided into 496
counties with 10.582.887 inhabitants in 2007) has a great importance for swine
meat production as well as for the total agricultural production of the country
(FUNDAÇÃO DE ECONOMIA E ESTATÍSTICA, 2007).
Results and discussion
According to the current survey, wild boar is present in 213 counties (42% of the
state counties) of RGS, covering an area above 73.000 km2 (26% of the state’s
area) (figure 1).
Figure 1 - Expansion of wild boar population in Rio Grande do Sul since 1991 until
2006-
The results reveal that the wild boar population is growing rapidly in Southern
Brazil, with core populations established in the mountains of RGS, in the
southwestern region (Coxilha de Santana) and Northeastern region (Serra
Geral), near the Santa Catarina State (North of the RGS capital, Porto Alegre),
being possible the fast expansion of this species to the Central part of Brazil in
the near future. The presence of wild boars (considered as an alien species) in
this region may cause a severe impact in the regional familiar income and,
consequently, in the national economy. Local authorities suspect that this strong
increase of the wild boar is also due to escaping animals from the common
captivity wild boar farms in this state. Those wild boars are not submitted to any
sanitary control being a large risk to the important commercial swine production
and economy of RGS. Recently the wild boar hunting was exceptionally
permitted in RGS to control the wild boar population increase and to prevent the
damages in agriculture and forest as well as the sanitary risk to domestic swine
farms.
References
COELHO DA SILVEIRA, J., LEBOUTE, A., FREITAS, T., SBALQUEIRO, I. AND DA SILVA, J.
(2003) Variabilidade genética em javalis (Sus scrofa) utilizando
marcadores moleculares do tipo STR. In: Livro de Resumos do XV
Salão de Iniciação Científica e XII Feira de Iniciação Científica.
Ciências Biológicas. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. p.
355. [in Portuguese]
FUNDAÇÃO DE ECONOMIA E ESTATÍSTICA (2007) Resumo Estatístico de Rio
Grande do Sul. In: http://www.fee.tche.br/sitefee/pt/content/resumo/
[acessed on 22th July 2008]. [in Portuguese]
PEREIRA DAS NEVES, M. (2007) Levantamento populacional de javalis
asselvejados no Estado do Rio Grande do Sul. IBAMA. Internal
Report. Porto Alegre. 141 pp. [in Portuguese]